40th anniversary of Countdown comic.

[Lew Stringer]

It's 40 years today since Polystyle launched Countdown weekly. No, not a comic licensed from the quiz show (thankfully) but it was, more or less, TV21 under a new name, with strips based on Gerry Anderson's tv shows plus Doctor Who. More info here:
http://lewstringer.blogspot.com/2011/0 ... n-no1.html

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

This week is also the 40th anniversary of Decimilization: the BEANO and DANDY both went up from 4d in 'real money' to a whopping 2p around this time: ho yes and the page-count went up from 16 to 20 pages at round about the same time.

[steelclaw]

I bought the first few issues of Countdown to get all the stickers to put on the poster which I pinned on my wall.
I thought it was a really good quality comic, specially the Dr Who Strip.
The price did probably put me off at the time I could buy 'Wizzard' and Knockout for less then Countdown.
I only have these 2 issues left now I would love the full run.

Issue 26

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

you could get into the Saturday morning kids' pictures for the same price as this comic, Steel, [in 1971] : 5p/one shilling. So it was pretty pricey 40 years back.

[Lew Stringer]

you could get into the Saturday morning kids' pictures for the same price as this comic, Steel, [in 1971] : 5p/one shilling. So it was pretty pricey 40 years back.

We didn't have a lot of money but I never saw Countdown as particularly pricey. Look-In was also 5p, as were American comics at the time. (Look and Learn was 1/6d, although the extra 6d did make that one seem expensive.) I suppose I saw Countdown as good value because of its glossy paper and colour.

[steelclaw]

I couldn't afford Look-In either my mates mum bought it for him he was lucky and rich.
The only money I had was taking Corona Lemonade or Cherryade bottles back to the fish & chip shop only to be told you didn't buy those here, it was hard to argue when your a little kid saying yes I did.
Never mind the power cuts we used to sit in the dark any way to save on electric.
So 5p to me was a lot of money.

[philcom55]

John Burns' Countdown strip really blew me away as, up till then, I'd only associated him with historical series like 'Wrath of the Gods' from Boys' World. I'd say it wasn't until issue two that the comic really came into its own though as that was when Gerry Haylock's wonderful version of UFO began in full colour. Haylock, of course, had been around in comics for many years by then drawing back-page biographies for Girl in the 50s and 'The Guinea Pig' for Eagle in the 60s, but it was his work on this strip (and later on Dr Who) that particularly impressed me.

For all its attractions, however, I seem to recall Denis Hooper later admitted that in his opinion Countdown never amounted to much more than a pale reflection of TV Century 21 in its heyday. His rueful conclusion was that such 'Rolls Royce'-type comics were simply not viable anymore in the 1970s (presumably he viewed Look-In as more of a magazine hybrid).

- Phil Rushton

[Digifiend]

That's exactly what Look-in was. It always had features alongside the comic strips, and in later years was mostly feature material. In that respect, it's an ancestor of the format used by Toxic nowadays.